What are some distinct characteristics of John Donne's Holy Sonnets?

The poem usually presented as the first of the
Holy Sonnets -- the poem beginning "Thou hast made me" --
exemplifies many of the thematic and stylistic traits of the sequence as a whole. Such
traits include the following:

* Direct, dramatic address to
God ("Thou hast made me" [1]).

* A frequent tendency to ask
questions and even to question God directly ("and shall thy work decay?"
[1]).

* A tendency to beg God for help ("Repair me now"
[2]).

* A pervasive awareness of the threat of death ("for
now mine end doth haste" [2]).

* A tendency to emphasize
paired opposites or paradoxes, as well as a tendency to use personfication ("I run to
death, and death meets me as fast" [3]).

* A sense of gloom
and even depression ("all my pleasures are like yesterday"
[4]).

* A pervasive sense of fear ("I dare not move my dim
eyes any way" [5]).

* A tendency to use balanced phrasing
("Despair behind, and death before" [6]).

* A tendency to
emphasize the corruption of the body ("my feeble flesh doth waste"
[7]).

* A strong personal conviction, by the poems'
speakers, of their own spiritual corruption (as in the referenece to "sin"
[8]).

* A frequent sense that God is the only answer to the
speaker's sinfulness ("Only thou art above" [9]).

* A
strong sense that only God can even initiate the process of salvation (as in the
reference to God's "leave," or permission [10]).

* A
tendency to emphasize sudden and unpredictable shifts, as in these
lines:

. . . 
I rise again;

But our old subtle foe [Satan] so tempteth
me

That not one hour myself I can sustain.
(10-12)

* A tendency to use
puns, as in line 12 (I cannot sustain myself; I cannot sustain my Self, my
being).

* A repeated emphasis on God's freely given "grace"
(13), which cannot be earned or taken for granted.

* A
repeated emphasis on the great and irresistible power of God, who is able to draw a
sinner to him as a magnet draws a piece of iron (14).

Donne
employs many of these traits repeatedly in the Holy Sonnets, but he
does so in ways that rarely seem merely repetitive or stale.